A District Court judge in New York has dismissed a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case, ruling the plaintiff did not have standing to sue because he did not allege to have suffered any concrete injuries in his complaint, which accused a collection operation of allegedly not marking his account as disputed with the credit reporting agencies.
The plaintiff reviewed his credit report and noted a particular tradeline on it. The plaintiff mailed a dispute letter to the defendant, using the address that the defendant provided on its website. When the plaintiff checked his credit report two months later, the account was not marked as disputed.
The plaintiff filed suit, and the judge ordered the plaintiff to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
In seeking to prove he suffered a concrete injury, the plaintiff argued that the money he spent sending the dispute via certified mail could have been used to pay other bills. While this argument has held water in other cases, what was missing from this case was just how much the plaintiff spent on mailing the letter and how much less he had to pay other bills, noted Judge Natasha C. Merle of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York. And the plaintiff never actually pled that he suffered a monetary harm. Instead, he argued that mailing the dispute letter “caused severe humiliation, headaches, emotional distress, and mental anguish and has also damaged Plaintiff’s FICO scores.”
The plaintiff’s other claims — severe humiliation, headaches, emotional distress, and mental anguish and damage to his credit scores — were vague and conclusory, deemed Judge Merle.
Judge Merle did grant the plaintiff the opportunity to file an amended complaint to cure the deficiencies.
